141

141
CAMILLE
You need to stop pacing,” Drew said when he woke up the next morning, still tangled in the mess of sheets we had made last night.
“They’ll call when they’re ready to call.”
It had been three days since the ultrasound, and I still hadn’t gotten a call from the doctor’s office. The more hours that passed, the more anxious I was that something was wrong. Other bloodwork had been done at the same time. It was possible that something was wrong, and the office was going to want to make a new appointment.
“I can see you spiraling,” Drew said as he got out of bed and stretched.
My gaze drifted down his body, eyeing the taut muscles and the way the morning sun streaming through the window made his skin look bronze.
“You keep looking at me like that,” he said as he made his way to the bathroom. “And we’re not going to make it out of here to go shopping for the babies.”
“That might be a pretty good distraction,” I said, considering taking off my clothes and getting in the shower with him.
“Camille,” he said, pausing at the door, “everything is going to be okay.
Whatever you’re worried about, it’s going to be okay.”
“I’m worried about the babies,” I said before taking a deep breath. I tried to stomp down the terror that was rising inside of me. “What if there’s something wrong with them and that’s why the doctor hasn’t called?”
“What if the place that does the bloodwork is backed up and we’re going to get a call later today?”
Drew crossed the room and pulled me into a hug. My eyes closed as I leaned against him, wrapping my arms around his waist. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, but I focused on Drew’s steady breathing, trying to slow my heart down.
I was panicking for no reason.
“You’re probably right,” I said as I stepped out of the embrace and looked around at the state of the room. “I’m going to clean up. I don’t think the housekeepers will like finding ripped lingerie when they come to clean after we’re gone.”
Drew smirked and shrugged before disappearing into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.
As he showered, I cleaned up the room and packed away our things. Once he was dressed, we would be heading downtown to start buying clothing and toys for the babies.
Excitement started to pool in my stomach the more I thought about shopping for the babies. It was a chance for me to give them everything that I never had growing up.
“Ready to go?” Drew asked a few minutes later, after he was out of the shower and dressed.
“Yeah,” I said, reaching for my purse. Drew grabbed our other bag, and we
made our way out of the room. “I can’t wait.”
We were walking from one shop to the next, the air still cold even though the sun was shining, and the snow was gone. Winter was fading fast, and I was glad that it would be spring soon.
Drew had bags of clothing hanging from his arms and I had a few different bags of toys and books. Trying to restrain myself each time we walked into a new store had seemed impossible. There were so many clothes and toys to buy. Holding back with the clothing was a little bit easier. The twins would be grown out of them in the blink of an eye.
We entered the last store I wanted to go to and I nearly froze in place. Rick, Drew’s assistant, was walking through the store with a younger pregnant woman beside him. Rick looked up as Drew nearly walked into my back.
Though Drew didn’t notice Rick, I saw the way that Rick’s gaze flitted beneath us before a slow smile spread across his face. He winked at me before steering the woman away.
“Shit,” I said, leading Drew over to a display of children’s books. “Rick just saw us.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Drew said, his tone completely unbothered. “He and his husband have a surrogate. I know that he spends a lot of time with her, making sure that she has someone to help out through the pregnancy and all that.”
I stared at him for a moment, surprised that he knew that much about his assistant’s personal life. Drew had always seemed more like the type to keep the people who worked beneath him at a distance.
“What if this gets around the office?” I asked, glancing at the bags. There were several names of baby stores on the bag. “Rick has a big mouth. You should hear some of the shit that I hear him talking about in the lunchroom.”
Drew sighed and shifted the bags to one hand, running his other hand up and down my back as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest. This was not happening. It couldn’t be happening.
I could see my career disappearing before me in the blink of an eye. “This is bad,” I said, looking up at Drew.
He shrugged. “The most that Rick is going to think of this is that we’re just two friends and I’m helping you out. Nobody has seen us together, other than dancing last night. Which was also perfectly innocent.”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. Drew was right. We hadn’t done anything in front of Rick that would lead him to believe that we are anything more than friends.
“Either way, rumors are going to be flying around the office on Monday morning and we’re going to have to come up with some sort of story that people are going to believe.”
“You and I were working on my image, yet again. You said something about needing to go shopping for the baby and then I offered to help. That’s as complicated as it needs to be. It’s still the truth too.”
“I don’t know,” I said, running a hand through my hair as I looked up at the books lining the wall. “Maybe we should avoid being seen in public with each other for a little while after this.”
With my career looming in the balance, I couldn’t afford any more risks to
it. Having a child with him was enough but being seen publicly dating him was another problem on its own.
If I lost my job, I wouldn’t be able to give the babies a life that was different than my own.
Before Drew could say anything, my phone started buzzing. I pulled it out and my heart plummeted to my feet. If I thought that our situation was bad before, it was worse now.
“What’s wrong?” Drew asked, his eyebrows knitting together as he looked down at me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No. I just saw both of our careers come crashing down around us.”
I turned the phone toward him, not wanting to look at the picture any longer. What I had seen was damning and it was working its way around social media. My phone buzzed in my hand with more notifications as Drew looked at the picture.
“This doesn’t look that bad,” Drew said, though his voice was tight.
“It’s pretty bad,” I said, pulling the phone back and glancing at the photo.
Drew and I were walking out of the clinic after one of my ultrasound appointments. My hand was on my stomach in a way that—I thought—made it clear that I was pregnant. Drew had his arm draped around my shoulders and his head was bent close to mine.
We were smiling at each other like we were a couple in love.
I sighed as my phone started ringing, but when the name of the clinic flashed across the screen, my fear started coming back. This had to be a call about the babies.
“Hello?” I said, answering the call as Drew leaned closer to hear what was being said as well.
“Hi, Camille. This is Dr. Lewis. I’m calling with the results of your
bloodwork.”
A lump rose in my throat, threatening to choke me. “Yes.” “Congratulations,” he said, his tone bright and happy. “You’re having
girls. Both twin A and twin B are girls.”
Tears sprang into my eyes as I glanced over at Drew. There was a smile spreading across his face. Everything else faded away as I embraced the happiness of the moment. We were going to be having daughters.
“How was the rest of the bloodwork?” I asked.
“We need to keep an eye on your iron, but there is nothing immediately wrong that we need to fix. I’m going to have you come in for bloodwork every other week so we can continue monitoring it.”
“But there’s nothing else?” I asked as happy tears rolled down my cheeks. “Nothing else. Both twins are healthy and I’m happy with the progress of
the pregnancy. Your next appointment will be next Wednesday.” “Thank you,” I said.
When the call ended, I grinned and hugged Drew. He laughed and hugged me back, all our shopping bags rustling between us.
“What do you say we take the rest of this stuff home and then we can celebrate?”
“Let’s go home.”
When we got home, we stored the baby supplies in the nursery. I didn’t bother to put anything away yet.
If I was being honest, I was too busy worrying about the picture to put anything away.
Though, the picture wasn’t as damning as I had initially thought. The more I looked at it as I walked into the living room, the more it looked like it could just be a friend supporting another friend.
“Are you still worrying about that picture?” Drew asked as he walked into the living room carrying two wine glasses filled with apple juice.
I sat down on the couch and tossed my phone onto the coffee table. “Yes, you know as well as I do that the last thing we need is this picture flying around the internet. You’re supposed to be cleaning up your act and I’m supposed to be a professional who doesn’t get knocked up by her boss.”
“I think we should just go public,” Drew said, handing me a glass before sitting down in the armchair next to the couch. “I don’t understand why we’re still bothering to keep it a secret.”
“We agreed to take it public once your image was refined. It hasn’t been that long and just think about what this picture is going to do to the progress we have made.”
“I don’t think it’s as serious as you’re making it out to be,” he said before taking a long sip of his drink. “You’re as scared as I am that this might be something between us.”
“If you’re scared too, then why are you fighting me on this?” I glanced at the phone again as the picture faded from the screen. “It’s not even that I’m scared. It’s that this has the potential to ruin both of our careers.”
“I feel like we keep having the same argument, but it isn’t taking us in one direction or another. There is paperwork that we can fill out with Crestwood and then it will be fine.”
“Drew, you’re not seeing the bigger picture.”
He scowled and set his glass on the table to the side. “Don’t tell me what I see, Camille. Do you think that I haven’t stayed up late at night thinking about our situation? I’ve tried seeing this from every angle possible.”
“And what did you come up with?” I asked, sarcasm dripping from my voice as I crossed my arms. “Since you’re the one who has built a career on public relations.”
“Enough,” Drew said, rolling his eyes. “You know that Clarke and Tyson would never fire you.”
“What other company would want to work with me after knowing that I sleep around with my boss? Let’s say that I leave Crestwood Capital and my name has been smeared through the mud. Then who’s going to want to hire me?”
“You’re considering leaving?”
“I might one day,” I said. I put my glass of juice on the table and crossed my legs beneath me on the plush cushion. “What happens then?”
“Why are you worrying about things that haven’t happened? All we can operate on right now are the facts.”
I sighed and looked away from him. The facts were that he would be patted on the back for hooking up with an employee while I would be an outcast in the professional world for sleeping with my boss.
It bothered me that he didn’t understand that.
“You know what,” I said as I stood up and grabbed my phone. “I’m going to go to bed and rest on this. I’ll see you at work in the morning.”
“There you go again,” he said, his voice carrying down the hall behind me as I went to our room. “Run the fuck away, Camille. That’s what you did when your old life got hard.”
I walked into our bedroom and took a deep breath. As soon as the door was
shut behind me, I let the tears start to fall.
This was a giant mess, and I had no clue how to move forward from here. Everything that I had ever worked for was at risk and the man I was falling for didn’t seem to understand that.
He thought that a few signed pieces of paper would be more than enough to fix this. He wasn’t the one who would be judged and ostracized by his peers.
I sighed and ran my hands down my face.
Pull yourself together, Camille, I thought as I stripped down and climbed into bed. I had connections. I could make the picture disappear in the blink of an eye. After making a few calls in the morning, I would have another scandal that would trump a picture of what could be seen as two friends.
Though I would be able to make it disappear from the media, if Tyson or Clarke had seen it already, they were going to have questions.
My phone buzzed with messages from Leigh and Haley. I ignored the messages as I balled up my pillow beneath my head and tried to get comfortable. There would be plenty of time to try and figure out white lies for their questions in the morning.
Right now, all I had to do was figure out a way to keep the career I had fought tooth and nail for.